Sy - Switzerland

“Numbers and figures will never tell the stories of a deprived child in a protracted crisis; of a child that grows up knowing nothing but war … ,” says Elhadj As Sy

“We don’t call them by their names anymore, we don’t even call them with their nationalities anymore … we dub them ‘the refugee’, ‘the migrant’, ‘the beneficiary’.

"None of those names are anyone’s identity, they are just (people in) situations that any of us could find ourselves in, if we had the misfortune of being born or raised in those environments.” Elhadj As Sy, a national of Senegal, is the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent’s Secretary General.